Tragic odyssey

Many immigrants have made perilous journeys, but Greece is rarely their final destination

Patras is one of Greece's biggest ports - known as the gateway to the west. Ships here leave to Italy and the vehicles on board often travel further still. It is a smugglers' hub into Europe - one of the continent's most vulnerable borders.

More than 1,500 illegal immigrants were caught in Patras last year; every vehicle carrying them was impounded.

But while the port authorities are rigorous in their checks, plenty more migrants will attempt the journey. Over 80% of those entering the European Union now pass through Greece.
The typical route is in through the north-eastern corner of the country, across the Evros river from Turkey. They continue through Athens and down to Patras, in limbo until they pick what they hope is the right time to leave.
"I'm scared I'll die at any time because it's so unsafe here," one Afghan says while cowering on a disused railway track. "Nobody looks after us - there are no human rights in Greece. My dream is to go to England and I'll try every day to get there."
The influx of new arrivals here has made immigration a hot social issue and a key theme in the upcoming election. In last month's inconclusive poll, the virulently anti-immigration Golden Dawn party swept into parliament for the first time in its history, promising to lay landmines along the border with Turkey.
The party rejects the neo-Nazi label, but its leader has been filmed making Hitler salutes, and he recently denied that gas chambers were used in the Holocaust and said the figure of six million Jews killed was "an exaggeration".